Ch 8 Thinking and Intelligence

How Does the Mind Represent Information? Some thoughts, generate images in our heads, others words spoken, some pulled fully formed without any conscious awareness of where they came from The brain represents information and that the act of thinkingcognition-is directly associated with manipulating these representations Analogical representations: have some characteristics of (and are therefore analogous to) actual objects-includes maps which correspond to geographical layouts and family trees, which depict relationships between relatives Symbolic representations: words or ideas are abstract and do not have relationships to physical qualities of objects in the world A. Mental Images Are Analogical Representations Cooper and Shepard: participants shown lettes and numbers, asked to determine whether each object was in its normal orientation or mirror image, longest reaction time is fully upside down Participants had mentally rotated representations of the objects or view the objects in their upright positions Stephen Kosslyn and his colleagues, visual imagery is associated with activity in visual perception (primary visual cortex), the same brain areas activatd hen we view something are active when we think in images The representation of that picture in your minds eye parallels the representation in your brain the first time you saw the picture The mental image is not perfectly accurate: corresponds generally to the physical object it represents 1) Limits of Analogical Representation The regularization of irregular shapes in memory is a shortcut we use unconsciously for keeping information in memory While generally useful such shortcuts can lead to errors B. Concepts are Symbolic Representations Our symbolic representations consists of words, which can represent abstract ideas in a succinct verbal form Grouping things based on shred properties, categorization, reduces the amount of knowledge we must hold in memory and is therefore an efficient way of thinking

Concept: a mental representation that groups/categorizes objects, events, or relations around common themes a concept ensuresthat we do not have to store every instance of an object, a relation, or a quality or dimension individuallyinstead we store an abstract representation based on the properties that particular items or particular ideas share defining attribute model: the idea that a concept is characterized by a list of features that are necessary to determine if an object is a member of the category, fails to capture many key aspects of how we organize things in our heads 1) suggests that membership within a category is on al all or none basis, but in reality we often make exceptions in our categorization ex: birds can fly, penguins are birds 2) also states that all of the given categorys attributes are equally salient in terms of defining that category, however some attributes are more important for defining membership than others but that the boundaries between categories are much fuzzier than the defining attribute model suggests 3) all members of a category are equal in category membership-no one item is a better fit than any other prototype model: best example an approach to object categorization that is based on the premise that within each category. Some members are more representative than others + allows for flexibility in the representation of concepts - particular prototype can be chosen for different reasons Exemplar model: information stored about the members of a category is used to determine category membership-all examples of exemplars of category members form the concept the exemplar model assumes that through experience people form a fuzzy representation of a concept because there is no single representation of any concept, account for the observation that some category members are more prototypical than others: the prototypes are simply members we have encountered more often C. Schemas Organize Useful Information about Enviornments different class of knowledge called schemas, enables us to interact with the complex realities of our daily environments schemas help us perceive, organize and process information Roger Schank and Robet Abelson have referred to these schemas about sequences as scripts Gender roles, the prescribed behaviors for females and males, are one type of schema, operate at the unconscious level

We employ schemas because (a) common situations have consistent attributes (b) people have specific roles within situational contexts Unintended consequences: reinforcing sexist/racist beliefs, scripts dictate appropriate behaviors and what we ciew as appropriate is shaped by culture Adaptive value: minimize the mounts of attention required to navigate familiar environments, recognize and avoid unusual or dangerous situations Mental representations in all forms assist us in using information about objects and events in adaptive ways How Do We Make Decisions and Solve Problems? -reasoning, decision making, and problem solving are used interchangeably but there are differences -reasoning: you determine if a conclusion is valid using information you belive is true Decision making: select among alternatives, usually by identifying important criteria and determining how well each alternative satisfies these criteria Problem solving: overcome obstacles to move from a present state to a desired goal state A. People Use Deductive and Inductive Reasoning Deductive reasoning: reason from general to specific Inductive reasoning: reason from the specific to general 1) Deductive Reasoning You use logic to draw specific conclusions under certain assumptions or premises Tasks are often presented as syllogisms, logical arguments containing premises (stmts) and a conclusion Syllogisms can be conditional or categorical Conditional syllogism-the argument takes the form if A is true then B is true if then reasoning; reasoner can come up with a valid but incorrect conclusion if the premises use terms inconsistently or ambiguously categorical syllogism-the logical argument contains two premises and a conclusion which can be determined to be wither valid or invalid, takes form All A are B, All B are C, therefore all A are C; our prior beliefs (schemas) about typical events and typical situations can influence our performances on reasoning tasks, ideas will influence what conclusions you are willing to accept as valid

difference between valid conclusion and truth, in deductive reasoning a conclusion follows logically from its premises, it is valid but may or may not be true 2) Inductive Reasoning use of scientific method to discover general principles is one example of inductive reasoning biases in inductive reasoning, often strongly influenced by anecdotal reports, esp when it comes form someone close to us B. Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics decision making has been influenced by normative models and descriptive models, normative models of decision making have viewed humans as optical decision makers who always select the choice that yields the largest gain descriptive models have tried to account for humans; tendencies to misinterpret and misrepresent the probabilities underlying many decision making scenarios and to act irrationally even why they understand the probabilities expected utility theory: normative model of how humans should make decisions, views decision making as a computation of utility, the overall value for each possible outcome in a decision making scenario, we make decision by considering the possible alternatives and choosing the most desirable one, rank alternatives in order of preference Tversky and Kahneman identified several common heuristics, the mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that people typically use to make decisions Availability heuristic: making a decision based on the answer that most easily comes to mind Representativeness heuristic: a rule for categorization based on how similar the person or object is to our prototypes for that category Algorithm is a procedure that, if followed correctly will always yield the correct answer Heuristic thinking often occurs unconsciously; not aware of taking these mental shortcuts-useful partly because it allows us to focus our attention on other things, since the conscious minds processing capacity is limited Heuristics require minimal cognitive resources, can be adaptive in that it allowed us to decide quickly rather than weighting al the evidence each time we have to decide 1) Framing Effects Framing: the effect of presentation on how information is perceived

Kahneman and tversky came up with prospect theory: two main components (a) the need to take into account peoples wealth in predicting their choices (b) the fact that because losses feel much worse than gains feel good, people try to avoid situations that involved losses expected utility Loss aversion. The second component of Kahneman and Tverskys prospect theory, losing is much worse than gaining is good 2) Affective Forecasting People overestimate the extent to which negative events will affect them in the future Gilbert and Wilson, after negative event, people engage in strategies that help them feel better, such as rationalizing why it happened and minimizing the events importance These stragies are generally adaptive in that they protect the sufferers mental health-making sense of an event helps reduce its negative emotional consequences People overstate their pain and underestimate how well they will cope with the event Affective forecasting can also influence our perceptions of positive events 3) Good Decision Makers Participants who performed better on the decision making test reported fewer negative life events than those who performed poorly on the test Applying critical thinking skills can positively affect multiple areas of a persons life C. Problem Solving Achieves Goals Organization of subgoals: requires breaking the task down into subgoals Sudden insight: insight is the metaphorical mental lightbulb that goes on in someones head when he or she suddenly realizes the solution to the problem Kohler, Gestalt psychologist, chimpanzee bananas Normal Maier brought participants, two strings hanging from ceiling, random objects on table Problem solving, revise a mental representation to overcome an obstacle Restructuring, representing in a novel way

reasoner can come up with a valid but incorrect conclusion fi the premises use terms inconsistently or ambiguously Scheere gave participants a sheet of paper that had a a square of nine dos on it, connect all dots with 4 straight lines Mental sets: previous strategies that have worked in the past, useful but often difficult to find the best solution ex: Abraham Luchins Our mental representations about objects typical functions can also create difficulties in problem solving Functional fixedness requires the problem solver to reinterpret an objects potential function Common heuristic strategy is working backwards, finding appropriate analogy, transferring a problem solving strategy Too much choice is unsatisfying, frustrating, and ultimately debilitating Psychological reactance is peoples tendency to respond to being told what to do and not to do by wanting to do exactly what is forbidden to them, even if they had no strong preference before their choices were restricted Satisfiers and maximizers Satisficers live according to good enough Maximizers always seek to make the best possible choices, frustrated by the countless options available to them and feel paralyzed by indecision when they have to select between equally attractive choices, hesitate in making decisions, continue to analyze and question even after they have made their selections, often ruminating about those selections negative features-often more disappointed with their decisions and more likely to experience regret Pattern emerging in industrialized nations for young adults to delay decisions about these life stages for many years to find ideal Increase in clinical depression, take personal responsibility for the disappointments, the trivial looms larger and larger and the conclusion is that you cant do anything right becomes devastating

How Do We Understand Intelligence -intelligence: the human ability to use knowledge to reason, make decisions, solve problems, understand complex ideas, learn quickly, and adapt to environmental challenges -intelligence related to speed of neural responses and the sensitivity of the sensory/perceptual systems (Galton)

-psychometric approach: focuses on how people perform on standardized achievement tests, examining what people know and their problem solving skills -Cognitive approach: examines the particular mental abilities that allow people to operate intelligently: how they process information, the speed at which they react, the amount of information they can hold in memory, and the extent to which they can stay focused on tasks -The biological approach: how the brain processes information and the extent to which difference sin brain activity are affected by genes and environment A. Intelligence is Assessed with Psychometric Tests Psychometric approach has become the most dominant and influential Tests that focus on achievement assess current levels of skill and of knowledge Aptitude tests examine whether people will be good at various tasks in the future and may predict what jobs people might be good at Alfred Binet developed the first method of assessing intelligence to indentify children in the French school system who needed extra attention and special instruction Test for measuring each childs vocabulary memory, skill with numbers, and other mental abilities, the Binet Simon Intelligence Scale Lewis Terman at Stanford modified the test Stanford Binet David Wechsler developed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), verbal measures comprehension, performance involves non verbal tasks such as arranging pictures in proper order, assembling parts to make an object whole, identifying missing feature 1) Intelligence Quotient Mental age: an assessment of a childs intellectual standing compared with that of same age peers IQ (intelligence quotient) dividing a childs estimated mental age by the childs chronological age and multiplying the result by 100, avg is 100 The term IQ continues to be used, but the measured is conceptualized differently because the formula breaks down when used with adultls Intelligence in the adult range is better conceptualized as what someone knows relative to the average adult and not to adults at different ages Normal distribution bell curve 2) Validity

Intelligence is good indicator of doing well at school, complex career, fairly good predictor IQ here means a score on a normed test of intelligence, relative to those of a large number of people who already took the test People from privileged backgrounds tend to have higher IQs, but other advantages like family contacts, access to internships and acceptance to schools that can cater to their need also help Huge differences in how much people reported working as well as how much they were willing to work 3) Cultural Bias Doing well on the IQ test requires knowing the language and culture of the mainstream What is adaptive in one society is not necessarily adapted in others, use items that do not depend on language, such as the performance measures on the WAIS, also patterns, most the proposed substitutes are also biased B. General Intelligence Involves Multiple Components -factor analysis: a statistical technique that clusters items similar to one another the clusters are referred to as factors -Charles Spearman found that most intelligence test items tended to cluseter as one factor and that people who scored highly on one type of item also tended to score highly on other types of items - general intelligence (g): factor that contributes to performance on any intellectual task, providing a single IQ score reflects the idea that one general factor underlies intelligence 1) Fluid Versus Crystallized Intelligence Raymond Cattell proposed that g consists of two types of intelligence Fluid intelligence involves information processing, especially in novel or complex circumstances, such as reasoning, drawing analogies, and thinking quickly, and flexibly, more like working memory Often assessed in nonverbal, more culture faire intelligence tests Crystallized intelligence: involves knowledge we acquire through experience, such as vocabulary and cultural information, and the ability to use this knowledge to solve problems, more liked LTM 2) Multiple Intelligences

Gardner proposed a theory of multiple intelligences: the idea that people can show different skills in a variety of different domains Bodily kinesthetic, linguistic, mathematical logical, spatial, intrapersonal (Self understanding) , and interpersonal (social understanding) Sternberg proposed theory of three intelligences: (1) Analytical, similar to that measured by psychometric tests such as being good at problem sovling, completing analogies, figuring out puzzles, and other academic challenges (2) Creative intelligences: ability to gain insight and solve novel problems (3) practical intelligence: dealing with everyday tasks 3) Emotional Intelligence Emotional Intelligence (EQ): form of social intelligence that emphasizes the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions to guide thoughts and actions Consists of four abilities: (1) to manage ones own emotions (2) to use ones own emotions to facilitate activities (3) to recognize other peoples emotions (4) to understand emotional language People high in EQ recognize emotional experience in themselves and in others then respond to those emotions productively Regulating ones mood, resisting both impulses and temptations as appropriate and controlling ones behavior are all important components of EQ Emotional intelligence is correlated with the quality of social relationships The idea of EQ has had a large impact in schools, industry, and programs have been designed to increase students workers EQ 4) Importance of G G predicts not only performance in school and at work but also longevity, low g is related to early death from causes including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, Alzheimers disease, traffic accidents, and drowning General intelligence, esp fluid intelligence seems to predict performance in jobs that require fast and creative thinking Gs main value is in allowing people to adapt quickly to environmental challenges and that the more complex the challenge, the greater gs importance Kanazawa suggests that general intelligence is only important in novel situations, ones level of intelligence

does not matter for recurring adaptive challenges, so it has little influence over many aspects of daily human life C. Intelligence is Associated with Cognitive Performance -intelligence is related to our brains efficiency as well as to keen perceptual skills -Galton speculated that intelligent people have larger, more efficient brains -intelligence, supported by low level cognitive processes, such as mental processing, working memory, and attention 1) Speed of Mental Processing Simple reaction time might require a person to press a comuter key as quickly as possible whenever a stimulus appeas on the screen Scores on IQ test are related even more strongly to this choice reaction time Inspection time tests-stimulus is presented and then covered up how much viewing time does a particular person require to determine which side A or B is longer Additional evidence that highly intelligence peoples brains work faster has been found by measuring brains electrical activity in response to stimuli presentation Intelligence and mental speed appears to be involved in the greater longevity of people with high IQ 2) Working Memory The link between working memory and intelligence may be attention Importance of staying focused makes great sense in light of the relationship between general intelligence and the accomplishment of novel, complete tasks Brain regions that support working memory are involved in intelligence 3) Brain Structure and Function Volume of neuronal cell bodies (grey matter) in frontal lobes and in other brain regions that support attention control is related to fluid intelligence but not to crystallized intelligence 4) Savants People who have minimal intellectual capacities in most domains but at a very early age show an exceptional ability in some intelligent process, such as related to math, music, or art Combination or prodigious memory and the inability to learn seemingly basic tasks is a mystery D. Genes and Environment Influence Intelligence -nature/nurture debate

1) Behavioral Genetics Genes help determine intelligence-but the extent to which genes do so is difficult to determine Social multiplier: an environmental factor or an entire environment that increases what might have started as a small advantage intelligence gene has eluded researchers because thousands of genes contribute to intelligence and each has only a small effect Destroying specific genes (knockout genes) or replacing selected genes with other ones (knockin genes) Mice who were superlearners possibility of designer babies genetically engineered to be smarter 2) Environmental Factors Poor nutrition can affect brain development and decrease intelligence Prenatal factors and postnatal factors Firstborns tend to have lightly higher IQs than later borne children (environmental probably) IQ scores have risedn dramatically during the last century of intelligence testing: Flyn effect Genes could not have changed much during this period, increase is due to environmental factors Every generation need more education that the precededing one and since work and leisure activities require more complex cognitive processing than in earlier years, cognitive abilities escalate within the span of one generation Other explanations include better nutrition, healthcare, refinement of educational methods, longer school yrs, smaller families, exposure to tech E. Gene Differences in Intelligence have Multiple Determinants Gender: no evidence for difference between g, but females do tend to underestimate their intelligence compared to males Race: given the importance of intelligence to educational and career attainment, claims that some groups are superior to others require close scrutiny about us important to discuss controversial and sensitive topics with an eye to being as fair as possible race is a biologically meaningful concept? Most genes are identical On avg African Americans have very different life circumstances than do white Americans, make less money, more likely to live in poverty

Stereotype threat: the apprehension or fear that they would confirm negative stereotypes about their racial groups Brain basis of stereotype threat expands our understanding of the way negative stereotypes decrease performance, even for talented members of negatively stereotyped groups